The Charm School
herself. The only hope was that he said it with the deliberate intention of annoying herself; if that were so, he would not want to talk about the things that had been occupying him—he would want to talk about her.
"Tell me what you've been doing," she said, and saw, with a sinking heart, that he was going to obey her.
She leaned her elbows on the table—a thing the girls of the Bevans school were never allowed to do—and inclined her ear to his recital. While she was saying aloud, "Really, I had no idea of it," or, "Oh, do tell me more about it," she was thinking in her heart, "The fickle, blind creature, he doesn't care anything about me at all."
Suddenly she interrupted him. "And haven't you thought about your friends a bit, Austin?"
He looked surprised at this change of idea, when he had supposed her to be so much interested, but answered, "Thinking is all some of my friends allow me to do about them."
This sounded more promising. She lowered her voice. "I was going to tell you, Austin. Mamma sees that forbidding you the house doesn't work—has just the oppo-
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